


A Curious Force

by inkchantress



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Cuban Lance (Voltron), I miss this show so freaking much, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, This warmed my heart to write bc I'm imagining it canon and now I am smiley, klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:22:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21523642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkchantress/pseuds/inkchantress
Summary: A little klance drabble I found in my wips that I edited a bit(Six-year-old Lance wants to know what love feels like).
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	A Curious Force

Lance’s mother told him it would feel like fire.

She’s only ever said one thing about it. Only once. “It will feel like fire.”

He'd been small, when he asked her. Barely six years old, sitting barefoot and cross-legged on the granite countertop, watching his mother peel carrots for dinner as his siblings chased each other in the backyard and had swordfights with branches and discarded planks of wood.

He'd been quiet, watching through the window as Luis picked up a wooden chair leg and pretended to stab Veronica with it. Rachel laughed as Veronica died a horrible and languished death on the green grass.

Rosa didn't look up, through the window or at her son in front of her. She looked only at the carrots, sliding the peeler across the skin. Lance turned his head in front of him to watch his mother. He followed each carrot peel with his eyes as they fluttered to rest on the cutting board, marveling at the transformation of the carrots, at the passage of time, at the ripening of fruit under the summer sun in the backyard where his siblings now played.

"Mami?"

Still, Rosa did not look up. She slid the peeler along the length of the carrot. "Mmm?"

"How do you know if you're in love?"

It was a question that had been on his mind for a while--to his mind, _love_ seemed like some great inexplicable force, some sentient being that chose you when you were old enough. Lance wanted to be old enough. He wanted to know what it felt like, to be chosen by this powerful force. But surely his mother would know. His mother knew everything.

Now, finally, Rosa broke her gaze with her carrots to meet her son's eye. He was leaning forward ever so slightly, legs firmly crossed, eyes wide in his head and eyebrows up in that curious expression that Rosa knew so well. He propped his chin up on his hand and waited for an answer, this freckled and tiny child missing a front tooth and wearing an old, baggy t-shirt of Marco's, hair causally rumpled, curious about the world and confident his mother would have an answer.

She had to give him an answer, of course; he was waiting for her wisdom to be bestowed upon him, and she had to oblige, even if she herself did not quite understand the world, either. Even if she made no sense of this great thing called _love,_ she knew what it felt like by now, greeted the feeling like an old friend who had never quite been inside her comprehension.

"It will feel like fire," she said, head tilted back down toward her carrots, because she knew he was listening. "And you will hate it."

Lance couldn’t get that sentence out of his head for years afterward--that afternoon in particular stuck in his brain, with the curious force that was love and the distant shouts of his siblings outside and the carrot peels that fluttered from Rosa's hands like dying butterflies. Even after he realized that his mother did not have all the answers, he knew that she had known love well.

_It will feel like fire._

Lance sat on the clean floor, his legs tucked beneath him. The jacket weighed down his arms. He ran his fingers along each seam--a crop top.

Who wore a crop top jacket?

Who looked _good_ wearing a crop top jacket?

Who not only looked good wearing a crop top jacket, who on earth made the jacket look like a second skin? Who made the jacket feel empty alone?

It felt like something he should be sad about--it felt like a discarded piece of a soul.

 _It will feel like fire_ , she’d said, _and you will hate it_.

Lance traced each red-and-white stripe on the jacket, his light fingers dancing along the seams, and then he slid it onto his shoulders. It was strange. Shorter than his own jacket (of course it was; it was a crop top. A crop top _jacket_. Who wore a crop top jacket?).

But it was comfortable. And it was familiar. And it smelled like Keith.

That afternoon came back in full, vivid memory. He was only six, then, and he had no idea what he was asking, nor what the answer was. He merely wanted to understand everything a little bit more than he already did.

Lance slid the jacket off and threw it to the floor, wrapping his arms around his ribs instead. He looked at it in a heap next to him and thought of carrot peels, of the constant motion of his mother's hands, of the strange and wonderful workings of the world.

It felt like fire.

He hated it.

**Author's Note:**

> let it be known that i do not stan voltron, but i miss when it was good  
> also i loved lance, and he deserved better.  
> please leave a kudos or comment, i always appreciate them! ❤︎  
> find me on tumblr: https://inkchantress.tumblr.com/


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